“I signed an arbitration agreement when I was hired. I assumed that meant this had to go to arbitration, no matter what happened.” Not necessarily. A federal law passed a few years ago, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault…
A lot of small-business owners believe that once the two employees involved in a harassment complaint have been split onto different shifts, the matter is handled. It isn’t. Separation stops the immediate contact. It does nothing to establish whether the…
A maintenance supervisor for an airline asked her whether she liked being restrained in the bedroom. She reported it. The company’s own investigation didn’t fix it. A jury believed her anyway. Two million dollars in punitive damages. Emotional distress damages…
Many employers treat a workplace investigation as a means to an end. Gather the facts, reach a conclusion, move on. As long as the conclusion is right, the thinking goes, the process doesn’t much matter. Recent litigation says otherwise. Employees…
“I signed an arbitration agreement my first week. I didn’t think it mattered once he started harassing me.” It doesn’t have to. Here’s what a lot of employees don’t know: an arbitration agreement does not automatically force a sexual harassment…
Someone at work keeps using the wrong name or the wrong pronouns for you, even after you’ve corrected them more than once. Maybe it gets waved off as an honest mistake. Maybe you’ve started to wonder if it’s worth mentioning…
“My boss makes my life miserable every single day. That has to be illegal.” It might be. But in California, the answer depends on one thing most people don’t know to look for. “Hostile work environment” is a legal term…
When workplaces get tense, employers sometimes try to restore order by policing language. Banning phrases, disciplining “tone,” or enforcing broad civility rules can seem like a straightforward management response. In California, that approach often creates more risk than it removes. …
Belief: an internal investigation is just ‘talk to people and write something up.’ That belief produces investigations that collapse under scrutiny. The defensibility of an investigation comes from process: who ran it, what the scope was, what evidence was preserved,…
Belief: Retaliation only matters if you fire someone. In California disputes, retaliation often gets built from smaller moves and faster timelines. Employees point to schedule changes, lost hours, sudden write-ups, exclusion from meetings, assignment shifts, and harsher supervision that starts…
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